The EU-funded SPOON project engages citizens and food decision-makers to transform food systems for a more sustainable, fair, and healthy future. By placing people's local realities at the center, SPOON aims to rethink how food is grown, distributed, and consumed, addressing challenges such as food insecurity and the environmental impact of food systems, which contribute up to 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The project leverages Citizen Science Labs (CSLs) and Behaviour Change Interventions (BCIs) across six European countries—Germany, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and Slovenia—empowering communities to collect and analyze food-related data.
SPOON also develops innovative, GDPR-compliant digital solutions, such as a multimedia questionnaire generator and a personal data wallet, to support citizen-driven insights. By bringing together policymakers, industry, academia, and civil society, the project explores critical issues like food waste reduction, food security, and transparency in supply chains. Over four years, 16 European partners, coordinated by CSCP, will work together to implement solutions, deliver policy recommendations, and contribute to the European Green Deal and Farm-to-Fork strategy. AIT's role in the project is to lead the development of the SPOON Evaluation Framework and Impact Assessment, focusing on evaluating Citizen Science Labs (CSLs), creating a monitoring toolkit, and assessing the overall impact of SPOON tools and the project. Additionally, AIT aims to enhance the impact potential of CSLs through formative evaluation and deepen the understanding of behavior change interventions and impact pathways in Citizen Science.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme under grant agreement no 101182299.
Start: 12/2024
End: 11/2027
Funded by: Horizon Europe, European Commission
Contact: Gudrun Haindlmaier
Website:https://www.cscp.org/de/unsere-arbeit/loffel/
Keywords: Food system; Citizen Science Labs, transformative impact pathways
